At Office Nomads, we’re as sick as you are of hearing about the crashing economy, the rising unemployment rate and the seemingly useless efforts of Congress to stymie the bleeding. So we’re turning away from the doom and gloom and choosing instead to look toward a future when things will be better.

One of the ways we think things will get better is through the creation of a green economy and the green jobs that will come with it. (I know, the word “green” is so buzzy these days that it hardly has any meaning anymore to most of us. But some folks have the ability to make the concept of “green” feel and be real especially when it comes to jobs, so hang in there for a sec.)

To whit, over at Biznik, there’s a recording of a live call-in interview with Van Jones who just came out with a new book called “The Green Color Economy: How One Solution can Fix our Two Biggest Problems.” The interview aired as a part of Biznik’s series on “Surviving & Thriving Amidst Economic Adversity”.

Why do I bring this up here? Well, personally, I find Van Jones to be a fascinating individual with a lot of great ideas that we as a nation would be smart to follow. Susan also pointed out that, for her, “This topic is particularly interesting as a coworking space owner - the idea of supporting and particpating in local, green economies is of utmost importance to me and is definitely a part of what we’re doing at Office Nomads!”

I couldn’t agree more. Local communities are where its going to be going on in the future, especially as companies have to find more efficincies (which means less employees) and more of us strike out on our own. Coworking spaces around the country (and the world) will be thriving as a new kind of local economy starts taking root. When that happens, you can tell your coworkers you knew it was coming thanks to Office Nomads and Van Jones.

Eager readers line up to buy Michelle's most recent book - "My So-Called Freelance Life."

A belated thanks to all of you who came out for the Fall Open House - what a great time we had!  Michelle Goodman brought an excellent addition to our seasonal open house, reading excerpts and answering questions about her book - “My So-Called Freelance Life.” A big crowd of budding freelancers came to soak up the event and to hear some of her helpful hints in person.  Congratulations to Michelle on another great book for the freelancing world!

Another big thanks goes out to Michelle Bates, our fall artist on display!  Come by the office anytime to take a look at two of Michelle’s gorgeous photo series.  They are providing a great new atmosphere in the space and we are feeling very lucky to have such great work up on the walls.

Kelly shows ON some love.

I’m wishing I had taken more photos throughout the evening, but I was much too busy having a great time!  If anyone else has photos from the evening, feel free to add them to the Office Nomads Flickr pool for us - we’d be glad to see more shots from the great night!

PS -Keep your calendar’s free on Tuesday, January 13 for the ON Winter Open House, which will be combined with the neighborhood Seattle Greendrinks!  That’s right, folks.  We’re in the pre-planning stages for right now, but Pizza Fusion and Sustainable Capitol Hill are teaming with Office Nomads to present a Greendrinks event for the Capitol Hill neighborhood.  Should be excellent fun, so save the date now!

Cats know to look up in a down economy.

Hard as it is to believe, all this economic turmoil does have some bright spots. For one, sustainable industries like those I cover for Sustainable Industries will likely thrive because anything “green” that replaces a less-sustainable and necessary product (think clean energy and electric cars) is positioned to do well in a tanking economy. Another bright spot in the economic doom and gloom could very well be coworking spaces such as Office Nomads and other similar “crowd-sourced” ventures.

I caught wind of the possibility from the Launchpad Coworking blog where they wrote about a column at O’Reilly Radar discussing just that. Writer Nat Torkington lays out his thoughts about what kinds of ideas and efforts will succeed because there is an economic crisis. Torington says he thinks cloud computing, open-source software, innovation in general and coworking will flourish during the recession because there is a recession.

People will have more time than money. This is good for open source software, but also for hardware and Make-style reconnection with the objects around us. The low-cost high-impact physical events we’ve created (Ignite, hacker meetups, coworking spaces, foo/bar camps) will thrive even as big-ticket conferences feel the effects of pinched pennies. The killer app in the “web meets world” space may just come from a Maker with spare time who sees a great need.

Covering sustainability, that doesn’t surprise me. As a writer, I talk to people in lots of different sectors. Those in the world of sustainability know what coworking is much more often than those in other industries with the possible exception of software and web developers. Considering that, if you believe the premise, “This recession will be good for innovation because recessions generally are,” as Torkington does, it’s only a short hop to believing that the innovators who tend to populate coworking spaces such as Office Nomads will lead the way to the next economic boom. Here’s hoping that as we do it, we’re all smart enough to build it on a stable infrastructure and not just create the next bubble.

I couldn’t help but use the first image I found when searching Flickr for “Looking Up” since I am a sucker for cats. Thanks to Flickr user ex.libris for putting it there under the Creative Commons license.